


A girl in Torushina

by Lazuliblur



Series: Torushina [2]
Category: Tenkuu no Escaflowne | The Vision of Escaflowne
Genre: Canon Compliant, Celena's gods are not other people's gods, Gen, movie verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazuliblur/pseuds/Lazuliblur
Summary: In which eleven-year-old Allen is naïve and six-year-old Celena is her father's daughter. *grin*





	A girl in Torushina

It was often said that there were no actual Torushina natives. The city had been built artificially around an underground desert oasis, its location carefully selected to intersect all the major trade routes across Gaea. From the beginning, it had been designed by a group or daring entrepeneurs to become the greatest – and wealthiest – commerce centre in the world. Everybody who lived there had at some point moved in from another country.

It was a popular tale among the population, and a true one as well, originally. The merchants who descended from those first Torushina immigrants loved exaggerating it, telling their foreign clients how their true homeland was the same in an astounding act of coincidence and that, in honour of that shared heritage, they would offer them their best discount.

Celena had never liked the saying. Even as a six-year-old it had disagreed with her. She had been born in Torushina and raised in Torushina and lived there all her life. She was the real thing, a true Torushinai and proud of it. Which was why she was determined to know every corner of her city.

She already knew the streets above ground level well enough. Knowing how much she enjoyed discovering new places, her father always took her along when he visited obscure shops for research materials in other parts of the city. There was one important place in Torushina, however, that Celena had never been to, not even close, and it was arguably the true heart of the city: the underground water springs. As a professional adventurer and explorer in the making, her ignorance on this matter was unacceptable.

Celena knew where most of the entrances were located – her father had pointed them out to her before – and she and her big brother Allen were just passing one of them.

She stopped in the middle of the street, arms crossed with an impressive pout for a six-year-old. It matched Allen's irritated scowl, even given the five year advantage that he had over her.

"You know, you don't have to take me all the way home, Allen. I know where I am. You can go and meet your stupid friends."

"Right. And Mother would kill me. I told her I'd pick you up from school. I'm not leaving you on your own," he said.

But his eyes were gleaming in interest and Celena knew that if she just pushed a little she could convince him. They were very close to home now – and close to the garden where Allen and his friends gathered to play Knights and Scoundrels. Celena had never understood what was so interesting about the game. Where was the fun in a bunch of boys trying to beat each other with sticks? Somehow, Allen enjoyed it.

"The house is right there," Celena said, pointing at the tops of the blue-eaved roof that could be seen only two blocks away. "I'm not going to get lost. I can go on on my own and you can go meet your friends."

Allen was close to coming around. He looked over his shoulder at the roof that Celena had correctly identified as home, then off to the side, to the tree-tops peaking over the closely packed houses where his friends would be waiting. They had built rope bridges across the garden trees and Allen had been dying to try them out all week.

"I've walked these two blocks thousands of times before with Mother and Father, Allen."

He turned back to her. Before he had so much as opened his mouth, Celena could already see that she had won. All that was left for her to do was hold back her grin. There was no need to make Allen suspicious, when he was working so hard to keep his stern and intimidating big brother facade.

"This is how it's going to be: you'll go straight home; no extra stops and no wandering around for sightseeing, signorina! If Mother asks, I left you at the doorstep. Got it?"

"Yep!" Celena happily replied, holding her arms behind her back in the best "I swear I'm not planning anything" pose that she knew how to make. Despite her best efforts, her lips were curling up and she was bouncing ever so slightly on the balls of her feet.

"I mean it, Celena! You are to go straight home."

Apparently not as slightly as she had hoped.

"Yep. Promise," she repeated.

Happy with her response, Allen took off. He turned around only once to check on her and Celena waved him goodbye from where she stood in place. As soon as he was out of sight, she turned around herself and skipped along the nearest drinking water supply pipe extending radially across the city, following it to one of the entrances to the complex underground cave system at the centre of Torushina, exactly where her father had said it would be.

* * *

 

Celena pressed her knees to her chest as she sat against the rock wall. She was cold and hungry and bored and it had been days since she had seen the sun. For a child of the desert, that felt like the worst, most disheartening of all her problems.

It had been days since Celena had left Allen behind to explore the water well. At first, she had followed the pipelines, ensuring that she could find her way back out. Whenever one of the water plant crews got close – their echoing voices and footsteps gave away their presence in the enclosed space – she hid behind whichever pipe was nearest, her tiny frame a perfect fit for the dead recess between the curvature of the pipes and the bottom edge of the cave wall. No one ever saw her.

But the caves did not form a continuous path. There were multiple gaps on the floor that had to be crossed by bridge or mechanical lift. Celena had tried to traverse one of them by walking along one of the larger pipes. She had failed to account for the moisture in the cave or for how slippery the lichens that grew along the pipes actually were. She had lost her footing and twisted her ankle trying to regain her balance. Luckily, the fall had not been too great.

After that, there had been no more pipes to guide her path and she had spent hours walking back and forth, trying to find her way back to where she had been, nursing a bruised shoulder and a sprained ankle. Eventually, she had given up on keeping her presence a secret and started calling for help, but nobody ever replied.

The tunnels grew darker and darker, the longer she walked. The ambient light from the water plant's electrical installation could not penetrate so deep. She was also completely disoriented, with no way of knowing if she was approaching the exit at the centre of the city or walking further away towards the periphery. She had lost her sense of direction a long time ago, after the many dead ends that she had stumbled across. Sometimes she had to feel her way around by touch. Her stomach had been growling for hours and she was thirstier than she could ever remember being. Her mouth was as dry as if she had crossed a sandstorm without a scarf to cover her face, when finally – finally – she found new light at the end of the tunnel.

The path led her to a vast gallery, touched by natural light, though the location of its source was lost somewhere among the stalactites and other rock formations hanging from the ceiling. Most of the area was occupied by a black-watered pond – and Celena feel to her knees at the edge of it to parch her dry throat.

At first, the water had tasted divine. The lake was the most beautiful thing that Celena had ever laid eyes on. Little by little, however, a sense of wrongness overcame her. The water was too dark, the lake too big and the silence too oppressive. She had the feeling that her presence was disturbing some slumbering invisible giant.

She decided then not to touch the water unless she absolutely needed to drink. She also decided against calling out for help while in the gallery. The quiet was so unnervingly absolute that her shouts would no doubt be for nothing. There was no one there.

Inspired by a fresh burst of curiosity, Celena tried to circle the lake and see if there was anything useful on the other end of the gallery, but the path did not extend all the way around. She did find, however, her invisible giant: a painting on one of the walls of an enormous creature with bulky shoulders, surrounded by tiny figures of men. The white outlines reminded her of the stark shadowgraphs that her father used to show her from his archaeological digs in a site that was rumoured to have been inhabited by the Dragon People of old. The shape of the giant also reminded her of the statue on the shrine outside of the city. The tenuous familiarity was enough to soothe Celena's nerves.

There had been people here, once. She could not wait to tell her father all about it, once he found her and they got back to the surface.

A little further ahead, she found more drawings of the same giant, this time accompanied by a second one with pointy shoulders. Beneath the two, there was a panel filled with strange writing that Celena could not decipher. It sent her head spinning with giddy excitement. She could not wait until she was old enough to learn what it said.

She had settled there to wait until she was found. She had light and plenty of water to drink – and there was no way that she would give up her find.

The days passed and the chill of the cave settled into Celena's bones.

* * *

 

It started as a low-pitched murmur inside her head. Celena had been dozing when the vague impression that she was not alone woke her.

A soft hum agitated the air, a vibration travelling across the stone, though the gallery was as quiet as it had been since the day that Celena had found it. Laying both her hands on the ground, she felt it too, a kind of tremor. Not like an earthquake. There had been one a couple of months back, so she could tell that this was different. Quieter.

Then something shifted, disturbing the still waters at the same time that a familiar shout echoed across the gallery.

Celena was on her feet instantly, trying to locate where the call had come from. She would recognise that voice anywhere.

"Papa! I'm here, Papa!"

"Celena! Hey you, get the others, we found her! Celena! Are you all right, Celena? Papa's on his way!"

She had never heard her father sound quite like that, but then again, she had never been so happy to hear his voice either. She had never doubted that he would find her, but the relief that he had finally arrived was still overwhelming.

In between calling out to her father, Celena remembered the movement on the lake. She stared at the expanse of dark waters, but there was not a ripple to be found. When she laid her hands on the ground, the tremors that had woken her had also stopped.

Celena glanced at the pictures on the wall behind her. She did not particularly care about religious stories – her father's grousing that it was all bogus was far more entertaining to hear than any of her mother's devout prayers – though she knew the myths about the god that lived under Torushina as well as any native. Her mother had told them to her and Allen many times while tucking them in to sleep.

Celena had never believed them. She still didn't. As soon as her father found his way into the gallery, he would be able to tell Celena what those pictures actually meant – but a tiny piece of her felt like it wanted to believe that maybe there was something there.

She crouched on the edge of the lake, dipped her fingers into the cold water and murmured:

"Thank you for looking after me."

* * *

 

In the end, the cave's strange drawings and mysterious writings were lost.

The rescue team had had to blast an opening through the painted wall in order to reach the cave. Celena told her father about them, in as much detail as she could remember – though the usefulness of a description like "squiggly writing" was up for debate – but she got the feeling that he was not listening. He had cried when he first saw her, falling to his knees to hug her tight, and had refused to let go of her for a long time afterwards, carrying her all the way through the tunnels back to the surface.

Her mother and her brother had been waiting there. Allen's eyes had looked swollen and red. He had begged her for forgiveness, but Celena was not sure what for. He had not done anything. Her reunion with her mother, though, had been the hardest. As soon as Celena's eyes met hers, the six-year-old had started sobbing uncontrollably. The only reason that she had stopped crying was because she fell asleep in her mother's arms, exhaustion catching up with her at last.

Four days after her rescue, once Celena had gained back the weight that she had lost during her escapade, she had gotten the scolding of a lifetime and been made to promise never to wander off alone again. And so she promised, easily and without a fuss – keeping her fingers crossed behind her back.

The fright and the scolding notwithstanding, Celena was quite proud of her adventure. She doubted that she would ever feel completely at ease in enclosed dark places again, but overall, she regretted nothing.

She had wanted to prove that she was a true Torushinai and so she had. Now she could say that she knew the secret places of her home better than anyone.


End file.
